Photoshop Express Editor



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Photoshop Express Editor


Photoshop Express Editor is a free online image editor that is suitable for all levels of users to produce impressive results. With Photoshop becoming a verb, there must be very few people who haven't heard of Adobe Photoshop, but the cost of the application can be off putting for many. However, by offering Photoshop Express Editor as a free tool, Adobe have a way of introducing new users to the world of Photoshop.

Free online image editors generally fall into two camps. There are more basic applications that apply global adjustments to photos and more advanced applications that replicate much of the functionality found in full blown image editing applications, allowing for more precise editing of specific areas of a photo.

Photoshop Express Editor falls into the first camp, but offers plenty of power to allow the production of impressive results.

 

Highlights of Photoshop Express Editor


As you'd expect from Adobe, Photoshop Express Editor is a very well presented online image editor with a good range of features.

  • Clear and well presented user interface

  • No registration required to edit photos

  • Many tools offer selectable thumbnails with different strengths of effects applied

  • Simple Red Eye tool

  • White Balance adjustment with presets for common light sources

  • Turn effects off to remove earlier adjustments without affecting later edits

  • Touchup tool presents a clone stamp tool in a very user friendly way

  • Decorate photos with text and a range of stock graphics

  • Easy to toggle in and out of full screen mode

Why Use Photoshop Express Editor


The word express in Photoshop Express Editor's name gives a clear indication of the intended use of this free online image editor. It's not trying to replace a full blown desktop photo editing application, but is instead offered for users not needing that kind of power or for advanced users wanting to make quick, but high quality adjustments to a photo when away from their main computer.

If you've used Variations within Photoshop, you'll be familiar with the way that many tools in Photoshop Express Editor offer a number of thumbnail images with varying settings applied. You then just click on the thumbnail that most closely matches the effect you want and it is automatically applied to your image.

I find this a really intuitive and user friendly way to encourage inexperienced users to edit their photos in ways that they wouldn't normally.

As users are working on an image online, they don't risk damaging the original photo and the interface makes it easy to remove any adjustments before downloading and saving the final photo.

The Decorate screen offers a variety of fun tools to allow users to produce more creative results. Text can be applied and edited, and the addition of speech bubbles and graphics should keep many users amused for quite some time.

Some Limitations of Photoshop Express Editor


As with all online image editors, Photo Express Editor's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. While it can be used on any computer without installing software, it is reliant on a reasonable internet connection.

It should be noted that the developers have produced relatively powerful and accessible tools and so more advanced users may miss some of the greater degree of control that they're used to. For example, the Touchup tool is basically a clone stamp, but it has been designed to allow users to experiment by moving both the source and target areas. While this will surely encourage inexperienced users to clone and remove parts of their photos, for a more advanced user using the tool for a quick edit, it may be a little frustrating.

Photoshop Express Editor is limited to working JPEG images only and while this should be fine for most users, it does limit the usefulness a little.

Help and Support


This is an image editor designed to be as user friendly as possible and when many of the tools are selected, the interface displays information and tips on their use. This in context help means that in many cases, even inexperienced users can quickly start to experiment with unfamiliar tools.

There is also a Help sub-menu in the settings menu, with links to FAQs and the Forums, which should offer a sufficient range of advice for most situations. There is also a menu item for offering feedback on Photoshop Express Editor, which offers an easily accessible way to share your thoughts with the developers, though it should be noted that it is in a multi-page format of questions, so you can't send a single line comment.

You can give Photoshop Express Editor a try at the Photoshop Express site.

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Adobe Photoshop Express
Photo editing I

Last time we finished with uploading our favorite photos into Adobe Photoshop Express' photo catalog (called My Photos), which offers organizing, rating, and album managing features apart from publishing. But hold on for a while! The uploaded pictures are nicely sorted into different albums, it's true, but doesn't any single one need a bit of sharpening, color adjustment or at least some cropping? This is where the Real Photoshop Thing, photo editing work comes into view. Of course, the Express edition, with its free and easy-to-use web-based user interface, cannot come even close to its widely respected ancestor, but the basic functions mentioned above are accessible, among a few others.



From My Photos, you have three different ways to get to photo editing. You can either click a picture, and then the Edit Photo button at the bottom, or double-click the photo, or hover the mouse pointer over it, and select Edit Photo from the Photo Options dropdown. The enlarged version of the picture will be displayed in the work area, while the command column on the left offers 17 different editing options.



There are further settings buttons under the image. The first three zoom the image (the middle one fits it to the work area). Zoom level is displayed on the right as a percentage. The next group contains the undo button, an up arrow for displaying the gallery of all previous steps (history) that enables you to switch back to many of them. Finally, there is another arrow on the right that redoes the undone step, in case you made up your mind. The right side of the bottom part contains four more buttons:



View Original: compare the original state of the photo to the edited one.
Reset All: undo all steps and return to the original picture.
Cancel: quit the editor.
Save: save the edited picture to My Photos.

Let's return to the editing options on the left. The 17 features are grouped into three main units—Basic, Tuning (enhancements), and Effects.





Crop & Rotate

The first feature in the Basic group. If you select an editing feature, its current settings will be displayed above the work area. Crop & Rotate has the following settings:



Aspect: fixed size ratio (select None for unlimited resizing).
Rotate right by 90 degrees
Rotate left by 90 degrees
Straighten: straighten the horizon (fine rotation by up to +/- 45 degrees)

Rotation is also accessible by pulling the mouse pointer outside the image, and dragging it holding the left button. This way you can rotate the picture as much—or little—as you like.

To crop a part of the image, first specify Aspect, or if you don't need a fixed one, leave it at None. You get a grid with four corner handles to select the cropped area. Drag the handles to change selection size. If you rotate the picture in the meantime, the cropping area will change accordingly. When you're done with the selection, use the buttons at the upper right to decide the fate of the picture. They are:
- reset grid and image to original state (orange arrow)
- cancel changes (red X)
- accepst changes and crop/rotate the image (green check mark)



Auto Correct

Automatic image correction feature, offering six different color, contrast, and lightness adjustments in the top row as small preview images (the first image shows the original state). Click any of them to accept that option. When issuing a correction command (e.g. rotation), a selected check box appears in the row of that editing step. This way you can immediately see which actions were carried out. Deselect the check box to undo the corresponding editing step. Click the empty check box to redo the action.





Exposure

Exposure adjustment also offers seven thumbnails. The middle one is the original, the variants get darker to the left, and lighter to the right. Lightness can be fine-tuned using the slider below the images, between +/- 64 (warning: the numbers are not identical to the exposure values used in photography!)





Red-eye Removal

Removes the red glint in the eyes caused by using flashlights. You have an easy job, just click the red eye and the program will do its best to fix it. Repeat the step for the other eye.





Touchup

This is perhaps the most powerful retouching tool in Photoshop Express. It is a clone brush of sorts, suitable for tidying up skin defects or other unwanted parts of the picture by covering them up with another picture element.

Simply click the area in question, and drag the pointer to specify the size of the area to be cloned, until the clone spot (circle) is the right size. You can also use the top slider to set this. The sample to be cloned is automatically taken from the adjacent areas, which is not always the best solution. Hover the mouse pointer over the clone spot to display the corrected area in green, and the sampled one in red. You can simply drag both to any other parts of the picture. This lets you take a sample from further areas. The size of the cloned area can also be changed with the top slider. You can repeat the above steps for having multiple cloned and sampled areas.



Saturation

Saturation means the intensity of colors. Just like with Exposure, you get seven thumbnails with the original in the middle and less or more saturated variations on the left and right, respectively. Once again, you have a slider for fine tuning. Below it, you can see a check box called Preserve Skin Tones that changes human skin tones in a lesser degree, in order to have facial colors remain natural even when changing the colors of the picture significantly.



Well, this was the Basic section with the first handful of editing options. Next week, we'll be discussing the Tuning group.


Adobe Photoshop Express (beta)


Web 2.0 has already swallowed good old Photoshop, too. Although Adobe has mentioned designing a web-based picture editing interface, we could hardly imagine the result. Alas, in the last few weeks, the plans have become a tangible (or more precisely, clickable) reality—Adobe Photoshop Express beta has been released, and it is freely accessible for anyone on the web. All you need to do is to complete a simple registration.



Photoshop Express runs on a Flash interface, so you need to get the latest Flash Player (currently, it is 9.0). Installation is offered automatically, so it shouldn't cause any trouble. After starting the application, click Join Now to register. You have to provide a few personal details (name, country, and e-mail address are required). You must also choose a password, as well as a name for your personal gallery. This will be something like http://www.yourname.photoshop.com (where "yourname" can be anything you like).

After registration, you'll be redirected to your personal home page, which offers four options:



  • Upload Photos to your gallery. Every user gets 2GB of storage space on Photoshop.com.

  • My Photos lets you edit and sort your photos, and organize them into albums.

  • My Gallery contains the shared galleries visible to other users.

  • Browse lets you view other users' shared galleries.

Under the buttons, you can find the latest Photoshop Express news. The upper right corner contains another button worth mentioning, This allows you to toggle full screen view, and thus, hide the unneeded browser toolbars.

First, you have to Upload Photos. Then you can click My Photos, where you can organize them in a separate window. The concept of Photoshop Express is more similar to Elements than to the professional edition of Photoshop. This is an online photo catalog application, topped with a bit of editing, but the emphasis is definitely on organizing, not retouching.

My Photos strongly resembles common picture viewing and organizing applications. On the left, you can find the names of the main groups. Under Library, you can choose to view All Photos, or just the Most Recent ones. You can click the Upload Photos button at the top to add new images to your gallery without returning to the home page.

In the next section, you can see your albums, which will also be visible to other users. Click Create Album at the bottom to create a new album. Afterwards, you can drag the pictures you want to put into it onto the album name, or select them and click the + icon at the right of the Albums row. The x icon beside it removes photos from the album.



The albums section is followed by links to different Photoshop-related online services. At the bottom of the left column, there is a simple search feature. You only have to type a file name, title, or keyword to display a list of the matching photos.

The rest of the screen is occupied by the uploaded photos. In the top right corner of the screen, you can set the size of the thumbnails. The following menu contains sorting options (by Name, Rating, Date, or Caption). Sort can be applied using Newest Date, Oldest Date, or Ratings.

The next three icons control the appearance of the gallery: the available modes are single picture (with sorted thumbnails above), multi-picture, and list (small thumbnails with detailed information on the right). The default setting is the middle one. It displays the photos with their file names, ratings, creation dates indicated, and a field for each picture to specify a caption. File names and dates should be pretty obvious. Ratings and captions, however, might be new to some. Ratings (stars under the photos) are given by the user.You can select a rating of 0 to 5 by clicking the appropriate star. For example, click the middle one to set a rating of 3. This is another opportunity to sort your photos. You can search your more valuable photos in less time. Rating-based searches display 5-star photos first, then 4-star ones, etc. Another—even more unique—catalog option is to enter captions for the photos in the Click to add caption fields. You can give unique captions to each and every picture, but you may also consider grouping possibilities, e.g., photos of your trip to the Grand Canyon may be fitted with captions such as Grand Canyon 01, ...02, ...03, etc., so that you can later display these photos grouped.



You can find four buttons in the region under the photos. We have already mentioned the first one, Create Album. The second one opens the editor for the selected image. The editing possibilities will be discussed next time. The third button simply sends the selected photos in an e-mail, while the last one deletes them from the gallery.



A few basic actions can be carried out by hovering the mouse pointer over the picture you want and selecting the appropriate command from the Photo Options dropdown. Among others, Rotate Right and Rotate Left can be found here.



All that is left from the My Photos window is the tiny button in the lower right corner. It displays detailed information about the current picture in a pane that opens to the right. The details are the following: File name, caption, creation date, upload date, camera type, album title, and picture rating. Click Advanced to display more information dug up from the photo's EXIF data, such as file size, image size, camera manufacturer and model, exposition, shutter value, focus length, exposure correction and flashlight usage.



Next time we'll continue from here with editing.



The professional version of Photoshop is 100% about editing and almost nothing about web, related features, and the "afterlife" of photos. Photoshop Elements, designed for amateurs, already emphasizes creating, organizing and sharing galleries and creative materials, but still we usually think of it as an image editor. Photoshop Express is a free online gallery that not only lets you to upload and share your photos, but also allows flagging and organizing into albums, and also contains a few editing features. If you were worried that it might suffocate offline image editors, forget your fears. This application satisfies completely different demands: those of people who are not concerned much about enhancing photos, and rather want a versatile gallery to publish their pictures.

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